we hear another language spoken, we involuntarily attempt to form the sounds into words with which we are more familiar and conversant—­it was thus, for example, that the Germans modified the spoken word ARCUBALISTA into Armbrust (cross-bow).  Our senses are also hostile and averse to the new; and generally, even in the “simplest” processes of sensation, the emotions dominate—­such as fear, love, hatred, and the passive emotion of indolence.—­As little as a reader nowadays reads all the single words (not to speak of syllables) of a page —­he rather takes about five out of every twenty words at random, and “guesses” the probably appropriate sense to them—­just as little do we see a tree correctly and completely in respect to its leaves, branches, colour, and shape; we find it so much easier to fancy the chance of a tree.  Even in the midst of the most remarkable experiences, we still do just the same; we fabricate the greater part of the experience, and can hardly be made to contemplate any event, except as “inventors” thereof.  All this goes to prove that from our fundamental nature and from remote ages we have been—­accustomed to lying.  Or, to express it more politely and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly—­one is much more of an artist than one is aware of.—­In an animated conversation, I often see the face of the person with whom I am speaking so clearly and sharply defined before me, according to the thought he expresses, or which I believe to be evoked in his mind, that the degree of distinctness far exceeds the strength of my visual faculty—­the delicacy of the play of the muscles and of the expression of the eyes must therefore be imagined by me.  Probably the person put on quite a different expression, or none at all.

193.  Quidquid luce fuit, tenebris agit:  but also contrariwise.  What we experience in dreams, provided we experience it often, pertains at last just as much to the general belongings of our soul as anything “actually” experienced; by virtue thereof we are richer or poorer, we have a requirement more or less, and finally, in broad daylight, and even in the brightest moments of our waking life, we are ruled to some extent by the nature of our dreams.  Supposing that someone has often flown in his dreams, and that at last, as soon as he dreams, he is conscious of the power and art of flying as his privilege and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an “upwards” without effort or constraint, a “downwards” without descending or lowering—­without trouble!—­how could the man with such dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find “happiness” differently coloured and defined, even in his waking hours!  How could he fail—­to long differently for happiness?  “Flight,” such as is described by poets, must, when compared with his own “flying,” be far too earthly, muscular, violent, far too “troublesome” for him.